Better This Way
by Sailor Seraphim
Summary: Sometimes what you want isn't what's good for you. Sometimes love just isn't enough. Sometimes the only thing you can do is just... walk away. Shounen ai. 2+1+2


Better This Way  
Walking Away Series  
A Gundam Wing Fanfic  
by:  
Sailor Seraphim  
  
  
  
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Author's Notes --  
  
I do not own Gundam Wing or any of its related characters. If I did, the series would be chock-full of tasty shounen ai goodness. I do, however, own the situations that occur in this fic.  
  
Well, this is a departure from what I normally write. There is a heavy angst warning here. There's been an OOC thread running on the GWA boards, so I've decided to play with the idea of exploring different (hopefully IC) views of the G-Boyz. This is the first fic in a two-part series. It's not gonna be very happy at all. You are warned.  
  
SPOILERS for... nothing. Just general GW knowledge.  
  
WARNINGS for... shounen ai, 2+1+2 with implications of 1x2x1, ANGST, POV (try and guess who it is before the end!)  
  
Enjoy!  
  
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It was better this way.  
  
I didn't want to deal with the angry words. I didn't want to see the hurt expression on my lover's face as I walked out the door and turned my back on the years that we had spent together. No, it was better if I left now, while my lover was away. Maybe having him return to a cold and empty house would be cruel, but it was preferable to the alternatives. If I waited until he returned, I know that I would never be able to leave. I could never resist him; I always bent to his will. He would beg me to stay and I would comply.  
  
It wasn't as if I had a choice.  
  
I'd been forced to sit back and watch as my lover dodged around the issues and ignored the gulf between us. He didn't see the problems, didn't realize that I, too, woke up screaming from nightmares. No, it was always about *him,* what *he* wanted, what *he* needed. As if *my* heart were somehow unacceptable... on a different level of reckoning simply because it was cloistered and protected from the world. So what was wrong if I guarded my heart jealously? I had let him in, hadn't I? Even if, during the war, all our relationship represented was convenience and comfort, we both realized that there was something more just beneath the surface. Then the war ended and we found ourselves together again. I allowed it -- allowed my lover to call the shots and drag me through what he considered a "normal life." And I didn't mind. Not at first.  
  
It wasn't my place to say.  
  
Because who was I to say what was normal or not? I'd spent my life not knowing the meaning of "normal." And so it didn't bother me that my lover never said the words. I knew of his fear, the gut-wrenching terror that saying the words would somehow kill me... as illogical as that sounded. But he was a young man who had been surrounded by death and harsh words. I understood. I allowed it.  
  
It wasn't as if I was mistreated.  
  
No, I knew my jewel-eyed partner loved me to the point of insanity. It was the little things in our shared life that rang the loudest, that made it hardest to walk away. It was the dry flattery, the grudgingly given words of praise, the way I was held at night. I loved to look at him, just basking in his presence like a cat in the sunlight. And he knew. Sometimes he would pretend to be asleep so that I could watch him secretly and pretend he didn't know. But on those lazy mornings when his vibrant eyes blinked slowly open, there would be a secret smile on his lips and I knew that he had been watching me through dark lashes in return. It was the actions that spoke, because my lover wouldn't say the words. Of course, I never said them in return, but we *knew.* But it was too late for all that now.  
  
It wasn't as if he would be surprised.  
  
Despite his ability to block out the things that he did not wish to see, the tension between us now was palpable. The arguments had started a month ago. The nights of sleeping on the couch, or perhaps even not spending a night in the house at all. It had been the shock of holding my brown-haired lover in my arms, reeking of cheap perfume and alcohol as he babbled about needing to "feel." And when the morning came, he didn't remember one thing about the night before. He denied that anything had happened and refused to speak of it again. I couldn't call him a liar. And me? I couldn't understand, couldn't contemplate what was lacking in our lives that he had to leave me to go to someone else. Wasn't I enough? Wasn't what we had enough? It was this one moment that finally opened my eyes and made me really see what was happening between us. It had finally made me angry, less willing to forgive and accept.   
  
It wasn't as if I didn't have problems, too.  
  
I was suffering just as much, still haunted by the dreams of war. Buried memories took this time of peace to stalk me, always wavering in the shadows. But I had pushed them all away to focus on my love. It was so one-sided, but it was all I had. We clung to each other because we were afraid of having to be alone.  
  
It wasn't as if we had any other place to go.  
  
So we remained together despite the pain, despite the heartache, despite the fact that the love that had once flared so brightly and hot between us was becoming tainted. Because our physical compatibility still inflamed our blood and it was easier to believe that everything was okay when you were too tired to move, and the two of us lay tangled together in a haze of lust and love that couldn't be denied. But I couldn't live that way anymore. I couldn't stay trapped in a life that was a mockery of what it should have been. So I had to leave.  
  
It wasn't as if he was the one who would make this decision.  
  
I was firmly convinced that he thought our life was "normal." That anything that happened between us would somehow work out alright because our lives had been so bad before. We had worked hard; we deserved happiness, didn't we? But what we had now wasn't happiness. It was just the facade of living while we were both dying slowly inside.   
  
It wasn't as if I didn't love him.  
  
God, no! I loved him so much that it almost physically hurt. He was so beautiful in my eyes. I told him once, in a moment of weakness, that he was like an angel to me, lifting me from the darkness. He had only snorted and said that he couldn't be an angel because his hands were too stained with blood. I had reached out then, twining our fingers together, and told him that if he was damned then I was too, and would follow him anywhere. He had smiled at me -- truly smiled, not his normal smirk -- and kissed me. We loved each other... too much! It was too much and we were too flawed and I wasn't going to have him be destroyed just because of my selfishness. I could let him go. I had to let him go.  
  
It wasn't as if he would willingly let go of me.  
  
So here I was, a duffle bag packed and slung over my shoulder. I had given my two-week notice with the Preventers, making sure he wouldn't find out about it, and was free to go. Most of my personal belongings I had already packed up and stored away. I couldn't take all of it with me now. I had to travel quickly, fast enough so that he couldn't find me before I had really gone away. If I was found too easily, he would just think that I was angry, not trying to change both of our lives for the better. I had even taken the time to take all of my favorite pictures of us off the mantel and the walls, putting them in a box on the kitchen table. I also left anything that he had given me as a gift. Anything that remined me of him, I left behind. I could only hope that he would get the message and leave me alone and live his own life. I had to break it off totally. I didn't say goodbye. I didn't leave a note. I left our home empty and waiting for him to return. I would never come back. And now I'm staring at the closed and locked front door, just blinking at the wood, afraid to take that first step off the porch. I steeled myself, kissed the fingers of my left hand (where a plain gold ring rested because I didn't know if I could take that off just yet) and then pressed my fingers against the cold wood.   
  
"Goodbye, Heero," I said softly, as if he would be able to hear me and understand. And then I walked away.  
  
It was better this way. It had to be.   
  
Because it wasn't as if I could do anything else.  
  
  
  
  
  
-- tsuzuku -- 


End file.
